Re: [OT] GentooLinux GNUstep Developer

[comrade]

Hi

> For one, it checks for gcc3 (as /usr/bin/gcc3) -- if it can't find it,
> it assumes 'gcc' -- bad, because (at least) on BSD 4.x, 'gcc' defaults
> to version 2.95.x (x = 3, I think) that has NO Objective-C support
> installed.

As a clarification, are you talking about FreeBSD 4.x? NetBSD and OpenBSD
have gcc 2.95.x that support objc as far as I know, although their libobjc's
are very old. Luckily the current libobjc in our source repository works
very nicely now, at least on NetBSD and I think OpenBSD.

> Correct. People may look at GNUMail, GWorkspace and Gorm and think "oh,
> pretty, I want that" but to install *another* "X11 toolkit" is almost
> not worth it, as they very likely already have GTK (GNOME) and/or QT
> (KDE) installed.
> 
> So why bother? Just for less than a handful of apps? Hardly.

As long as the install process is fairly bullet-proof and automated,
people install all sorts of junk for even a single app. Look at M$
downloads for example...

Debian is a fantastic example of what automated installation gives
you; it's amazing what you find installed on a Debian box because it's
so easy. Compare this with traditional RPM or Solaris pkg dependency
hell, or even NetBSD binary packages, all of which need the user to
track down the dependencies.

Regards

Peter